Clarence
Rowley ’95, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace
engineering, and David W. Wood, assistant professor of chemical
engineering, each received a Faculty Early Career Development
(CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Clarence
Rowley

David
Wood

CAREER
awards are the NSF’s most prestigious awards
for new faculty members. They recognize and support “early
career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who
are most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st
century.”

Professor Rowley’s research project is titled “Model
reduction for control of fluids.” The project will
address specific model reduction techniques that include
balanced truncation and proper orthogonal decomposition,
and symmetry reduction methods from geometric mechanics.

The education components include developing an exchange
program with Brazil to promote engineering education in an
international setting. In addition, a new outreach program
will help local elementary school teachers introduce engineering
into K-6 classrooms by organizing undergraduates to volunteer
their time to assist with the technical aspects of engineering
projects.

In addition to receiving a CAREER award, Professor Rowley
was featured in the February 2004 issue of IEEE Control Systems
Magazine. He joined the SEAS faculty in fall 2001. He received
both his M.S. and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the
California Institute of Technology.

Professor Wood joined Princeton in 2001. His research program
is centered on the application of genetic manipulation and
protein engineering to the development of improved biotechnologies,
including bioseparations, biosensors, and novel routes to
drug discovery.

Professor Wood’s CAREER-funded research project is
titled “Protein switches for molecular biotechnology.” The
objective of this research is to develop a new family of
ligand-triggered, self-splicing, and self-cleaving proteins
with a wide variety of potential applications.

The education components include providing students with
information and skills to allow them to make greater contributions
at the interface between engineering and biology, a high
school intern program, the use of learning style evaluations
in an introductory engineering course, and a seminar series
in applied biotechnology.

Weiss
makes Top 10 list

The
research of Ron Weiss, assistant professor in the Department
of Electrical Engineering, was named among the 10 emerging
technologies that will change the world by Technology Review
Magazine.

In exploring the juncture between biology and computer engineering,
Professor Weiss has undertaken the ambitious task of “programming” living
cells. He does so by engineering the cell’s DNA to
manufacture designated proteins and uses the concentrations
of these proteins as “computational signals.” He
eventually hopes to do the same type of modeling of tissue-specific
human stem cells, instructing them on how to become different
types of cells and, perhaps eventually, whole organs.

Shvartsman
selected as Sloan Fellow

Stanislav
Shvartsman *99, assistant professor of chemical
engineering and associated faculty member with the
Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, has
been named an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow.

Sloan Research Fellowships recognize young scientists who
show exceptional promise of making fundamental contributions
to new knowledge in chemistry, computational, and evolutionary
molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics,
neuroscience, and physics. Sloan Research Fellowships are
among the most competitive awards for young faculty in science
and engineering, and carry a $40,000 grant to be used in
a flexible and largely unrestricted manner so that recipients
can pursue the lines of inquiry that are the most compelling
to them.

Professor Shvartsman joined the Princeton faculty in 2001.
He is interested in the development of quantitative models
for cell communication in tissues.